THE SHOW
Starring John Gilbert, Renee Adoree and Lionel Barrymore
MOTION PICTURE CLASSIC
July, 1927
I guess Tod Browning can't forget that thriller of yesteryear, "The Unholy Three." He had us all shivering with suspense and staring pop-eyed at the uncanny chain of events and queer doings in that number. In attempting to duplicate it, he has shot wide of the mark.
"The Unholy Three" was of such an unusual character in its depiction of side-show freaks earning a shady living -- that any attempt to imitate it is disastrous unless there is real motivation and characterization behind it. This is what "The Show" lacks -- and not even the presence of John Gilbert and Renée Adorée are able to lift it out of the rut of mediocrity in which its plot has placed it.
The background is a European sideshow with Gilbert playing the role of the barker. He doubles in one of the acts and carries on a flirtation with a girl or three at the same time he is professing to be constant to Renée. It gets very creepy and snaky -- especially when a Gila monster starts to leap and bite. 'Tis not a pretty thing by any means.
The performers do their stuff -- become involved in romantic entanglements and what-not. The villain goes Desmond with a vengeance and the heart interest is entirely out of order. There is no apparent reason for introducing a sentimental old blind man. He makes four distinct entrances into the heroine's room for the purpose of repeating his pet topic about his boy.
The film offered possibilities at the start. It has a certain tension in its scenes which aids the suspense, but after the early episodes, it becomes bewildering -- and finally sloughs off into an orthodox ending.
THE SHOW
starring John Gilbert, Renee Adoree and Lionel Barrymore
PICTURE PLAY MAGAZINE
June, 1927
"The Show" doesn't quite get over, on the whole, as fully as John Gilbert's vivid acting as Cock Robin deserves. It is a melodrama of a Budapest side show, and Gilbert plays the barker - vain, cruel, unscrupulous - with authority and zest. It is quite unlike any of his other roles, and one can easily understand his enthusiasm for it. This makes it doubly regrettable that the picture moves slowly and lacks an arresting quality, in spite of a novel background and colorful hocus-pocus on the stage of the side show. Renee Adoree, photographed to her disadvantage, plays Salome, Cock Robin's inamorata, but for some reason she is listless. There is the villainous Greek, done by Lionel Barrymore, a stupid country girl who blindly adores Cock Robin, and an old man, who is made to believe by Salome that his criminal son is a brave soldier. It is her kind deception that seemingly brings about a great reformation in Cock Robin's character, when he discovers it; but it left me unconvinced of anything except the scenario writer's hard work, and Gilbert's efforts to vivify it.
Video source: Turner archives